Gail Alexan­der

While sev­er­al In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors say Tues­day's meet­ing with Gov­ern­ment and the pro­tec­tive ser­vices on leg­is­la­tion to pre­cept sol­diers, pro­vid­ed "a whole new range of knowl­edge," In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor El­ton Prescott, SC, says he still needs to be "per­suad­ed" on the is­sue.

Tues­day's three-and-a-half-hour meet­ing took place among PP House and Sen­ate lead­ers–Roodal Mooni­lal and Gan­ga Singh–heads of the De­fence Force and Po­lice Ser­vice and the In­de­pen­dents to clar­i­fy the In­de­pen­dents' con­cerns on the bill ahead of re­sump­tion of de­bate next Tues­day in the Sen­ate.The meet­ing was agreed up­on af­ter In­de­pen­dents, in­clud­ing Prescott, voiced con­cerns about the bill dur­ing de­bate two weeks ago.

Af­ter the meet­ing, Gov­ern­ment sources hint­ed amend­ments may be made to the leg­is­la­tion.In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day Mooni­lal said while the meet­ing was not geared to­wards amend­ments, it may pro­duce use­ful sug­ges­tions the Gov­ern­ment could con­sid­er.

He added: "It gave the In­de­pen­dents a very good op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­ter­face. I saw on blog­ger groups talk­ing about the meet­ing but this was not an un­usu­al meet­ing. The In­de­pen­dents raised is­sues and Gov­ern­ment mere­ly fa­cil­i­tat­ed a meet­ing with the pro­tec­tive ser­vices to clar­i­fy this.

"The De­fence Force made a very de­tailed sub­mis­sion and that sub­mis­sion may very well ap­pear dur­ing de­bate so it was a very pro­duc­tive meet­ing." In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Sub­has Ramkhelawan, who left the meet­ing ear­ly, said dis­cus­sions had not as­suaged all of his con­cerns.Prescott said yes­ter­day: "The meet­ing was an op­por­tu­ni­ty for us to hear from the tech­nocrats and pro­fes­sion­als how they have been func­tion­ing to­geth­er.

"We sought to get from them how they per­ceived the amend­ed bill, in terms of as­sist­ing what they are do­ing to­geth­er. They came well pre­pared. They are very pro­fes­sion­al peo­ple."I won't say it shed more light on the sit­u­a­tion for me. I have al­ready spo­ken in the de­bate so I will need to be per­suad­ed when de­bate re­sumes, when oth­er speak­ers de­liv­er con­tri­bu­tions and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al replies at the end. When I hear this, I will then be form­ing a fi­nal po­si­tion."

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr Lennox Bernard said: "The in­for­ma­tion was use­ful. It was a pro­duc­tive meet­ing, since we got more in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing the na­ture, con­tent and pur­pose of the mat­ter."It pro­vid­ed a whole new range of knowl­edge which would help our stream of con­scious­ness make a de­ci­sion best suit­ed for T&T as a de­bate on crime is be­yond all the oth­er kinds of machi­na­tions and we are in­tent on do­ing what is best for T&T.

"So this knowl­edge would have giv­en us more ma­te­r­i­al on how we should go. We al­so got an op­por­tu­ni­ty to tell peo­ple what was ex­pect­ed of them." He added: "The fact that we stayed more than three hours in­di­cates we did a lot of prob­ing on the na­ture and scope of the De­fence Force and Po­lice Ser­vice and if there was any rea­son to blur the lines be­tween."Grant­ed we felt this sort of meet­ing should have been held be­fore the first leg of de­bate."

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr James Arm­strong added: "It was a use­ful meet­ing in that there was a lot of in­for­ma­tion I was in­ter­est­ed in and I was able to get first-hand re­spons­es."So it was a use­ful op­por­tu­ni­ty and very in­ter­est­ing. I am wait­ing to hear more of the de­bate so we will see what tran­spires next week."Of the nine In­de­pen­dents, Sen­a­tor He­len Dray­ton did not at­tend the meet­ing since she was ill.